Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps she has taken to (a) minimise rent increases and (b) increase affordable renting provisions.

The £39 billion announced at the Spending Review for the new Social and Affordable Homes Programme for 2026-27 to 2035-36 is the biggest long-term investment in social and affordable housing in recent memory.

Our ambition is to deliver up around 300,000 social and affordable homes over the programme’s lifetime. If we achieve this ambition and our target of at least 60% of the homes being for Social Rent, the new programme will deliver around 180,000 homes for Social Rent – approximately a sixfold increase on the number of grant-funded Social Rent homes delivered in the decade up to 2024.

We also announced a 10-year rent settlement (that will permit increases by up to CPI+1% each year), which will give providers the financial certainty to invest in new and existing homes, but also crucially protect tenants from excessive rent increases.